


to lights in our blood vessels curdling like burnt wire

by kay_cricketed



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Truth Serum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-24 02:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4902802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Illya is captured by the enemy and drugged with a truth serum, Napoleon and Gaby try their best to balance between taking advantage of the effects and doing what they should have done a long time ago: bring him in from the cold.  Funnily enough, Illya is the only one who seems to be surviving what the truth means for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after the film, and was written for the meme prompt of drugged!Illya. This fic has the truth serum trope, which means some element of dubcon conversation; however, while the serum makes Illya more pliant and open to speech, he has control over whether to speak or not. This still does not put him in an emotionally good place always, so fair warning.
> 
> Minor warning for references to Illya's mother, pretty much same as the film.

**i.**

 

He pours two fingers of the Hennessy cognac and swallows it neat. The alcohol burns a path through the lump in his throat, but he can't taste its nuances—only coppery blood and overworked spit. _A waste_ , he thinks.

Gaby takes the immodest decanter and his glass from him, canary yellow fingernails clicking against crystal. She pours indiscriminately, the gold glugging out. "Why can't they leave it in a bottle," she says. When she tosses the drink back, he watches her bite the rim of the glass, the stretch of her jaw working.

Napoleon hopes the cognac does more for her than it had for him. He rubs his face and feels every minute of his exceedingly long day crush in from all sides. "We have to be on the extraction team," he says.

"You know why we can't be on the extraction team," says Gaby. She sinks down on the hotel sofa, and most men would name her unreadable, but Napoleon sees beneath the surface, sees those waters churning and clawing. "We're too close to the objective."

"That is precisely why we have to be on the extraction team."

"We don't get to make those choices."

"You have _leverage_ ," Napoleon says. "I don't know what you were saving it for, and I have no right to ask you to use it now. But if you were keeping it for a rainy day, the skies won't get much darker."

She doesn't argue with him. She doesn't replenish her drink, either, staring at the gaudy stuffed ottoman between them. Maybe she is thinking about putting her feet up. Maybe she is thinking about how Illya moves bulky spare furniture against the walls when they stay in hotels, because she likes to get drunk and dance to the radio, because Napoleon hates to leave his belongings strewn or on the floor. Illya does this thing without being asked. He prefers if they pretend not to notice.

They notice. They are delighted.

They tease him, if they feel mean.

Napoleon shudders, spine to the quicksilver veins netting his heart. He does not feel mean at this moment. He feels small and terrible. He feels like the jack beneath a child's foot, an empty gift box, the pinch that finds blood. _It was my fault,_ he wants to say. _I left him in there and I left him to wake up to their questions and instruments, like I did, once. I thought he was dead. I came home limping, when I ought to have been chasing what wasn't a body._

Gaby must know—she's read it in his mouth, his eyelashes swept low. He wears his shame like a damp suit. What she plans to do about it, Napoleon can't guess. She's looking at her hand now, fingers splayed out. She doesn't wear the fake engagement ring—in fact, Napoleon hasn't seen it since their final days in Italy—but the soft lines at the base of her knuckle tell stories enough.

"He's going to be very angry we came for him," she says, finally.

Napoleon toasts her with an invisible glass. He doesn't say, _Those men will leave us nothing but his teeth._

 

**ii.**

 

What they have is newborn, from a complicated birthing. They haven't even given it a name.

In Istanbul, the baths are cloying hot and fragrant, and Illya is furtive about his nakedness. He has more scars than a cutting board. The markets burst with color and exotic trade, offering up acquisitions that Napoleon finds curiously satisfying despite the lack of skill in taking them. He purchases an antique dish and comb, a painting of another painting, juicy plump sarma, and spices that—as Gaby says, lightly mocking—smell better than the old feet and are far less expensive. She comes to life in Istanbul: a small dark-eyed junco tasting something beyond millet seed for the first in her life. In her element, in complete custody of her future, she thrives and leads them both to water.

It is on the water's edge that Napoleon catches his arms around Gaby and laughs, reveling in the simple nature of good company. He marvels that he's lasted so long without.

Illya, too, seems to enjoy the water when it's only the three of them. His shoulders unwind and his thumb traces the circumference of his father's watch, circling to a slow song only he can hear. He watches them. Napoleon, thoughtful, thinks, _When did I join this fiasco in the making?_

Catching him by surprise, Gaby lightly smacks his cheek. "You're a million miles away," she says. "Tell me you brought something to drink."

Napoleon looks down at her mouth, categorizes the shade of her lipstick. "Believe me," he says, "I wouldn't want to miss this."

Between them, they polish off a bottle of Scotch. Gaby puts her bare feet on Illya's lap, perhaps curious as to what he will do. He doesn't drink. He rubs her ankle and pushes his knuckles into the sole of her foot, and Napoleon watches her inhale fast, watches her slow-burn pleasure, and yes, he watches Illya—who obviously has no idea how to touch a woman, but is learning, is quietly content to do something that no one has ordered him to do. 

Napoleon decides it wouldn't be any fun if it were too easy for Peril. He crooks a grin at Gaby and they share a silent communion; they are owed this, of course, after their narrow escape over the wall. Let him work for it. Let him sulk and stumble and find his way.

(It's only supposed to be a little fling of sweetness, some _fun_. Four missions later, Napoleon panics because he would die for them. Without question, without regret, he would burn the marrow out of his body so long as they would walk. Of all the priceless antiquities he has held in his hands, this is the most terrifying, because it's the only thing he can't afford to lose.)

 

**iii.**

 

"These men are biochemists," Waverly tells them. "They've holed up on a small island not far from where Kuryakin was taken in Sicily. A rather odd breed of megalomaniac, I have found. I can't imagine they want any information from Kuryakin; however, they are in sore need of another of his stock."

"Test subjects," says Gaby. Her face betrays nothing.

Waverly looks between them. Gently, he says, "Are you very sure that you want to do this? You may be needed—after."

"We may," Gaby agrees, "and we may be needed—during."

Napoleon nods to her, briefly. It is less support than it is acknowledgement of her unspoken order to speak his first words to Illya with care. Unnecessary though it may be, he dredges up enough energy to be charmed. She, too, is learning, is dismantling them both like engines in her chop shop in Berlin.

"I suppose it worked the last time we had an extraction," says Waverly. "I do like seeing this kind of commitment. It speaks well of the three of you." He glances at Napoleon, and god save them, he seems to mean it.

 

**iv.**

 

Two months ago: London, beneath a sweep of fog rivering the city. Rain batters a sea of umbrellas. Taking shelter beneath a grocer's overhang, Napoleon breathes in the damp and oil-slick smell of the cabs.

Illya is studying the window, which is set up as the baker's display. He frowns at the confections.

"Thinking of bringing something back for Miss Teller?" Napoleon asks.

"I would not know what to bring," Illya says, stiffly.

The display features sweet breads and pasties and scones, thumbprint cookies and fairy cakes. Napoleon closes his eyes and indulges in the memory of flavors—though he appreciates wine and truffles, any food is a food worth savoring. "Fairy cakes," he says. "It's not something she would indulge in herself. But she would like fairy cakes."

"What are they," says Illya.

Napoleon thinks about Illya's face when he first bites into a fairy cake. He thinks that yes, that is something he would like to see.

"After you," he says, gesturing to the door.

 

**v.**

 

When they find Illya, he is strapped down to a chair and his cheek is bruised so dark, it appears smudged with soot. His head wobbles back and forth as if he's trying to stay awake. His eyes are cloudy. He's staring up at the biochemist asking him questions with guarded confusion. He's _alive_ , which is the sort of painful shock that Napoleon could get used to.

The look on his face when he sees Napoleon step in through the door, though. That look—it's the same one. It's the damn same one as London, and it hits Napoleon like a freight train in the chest. Napoleon forces a smile and presses his finger against his lips.

"I think we're ready for another round of questions," says the biochemist.

Illya straightens in the chair, as if he is a school boy about to recite. "I think not," he announces. "Cowboy and chop-shop girl are here to rescue me."

Napoleon is going to _murder him_ —right after he saves his life.

 

**vi.**

 

There is very little blood. A few track marks on his forearm—a crust of maroon around his ear. All things considered, Napoleon has given Illya more marks than these mad men, and he's beginning to feel good again as he's cutting the restraints. The biochemist is unconscious and truly, it hadn't been a struggle, even forewarned. The strange, deepening dread that knocked him off balance starts to recede. 

"Ready to get out of here?" he asks. "Miss Teller is anxious to see you."

Illya says, "I am very glad to see you." Then he adds, "I will be very glad to see her. I am glad she did not come into the room, though."

Napoleon pauses, sliding the last strap from around Illya's chest. He takes Illya's chin in hand and turns his face this way, that way, back again.

"Your pupils are dilated," he says. "Did they give you something?"

"Yes," Illya says, his accent thick and mangling. "Three needles while I was conscious. This last needle—it was different. Had stronger effect."

"Having seen you after two glasses of wine, I'm not surprised. You're a lightweight, Peril."

Illya laughs.

He laughs, full-body and loud, and Napoleon has _never heard_ Illya offer more than a sardonic chuckle or smug _hah_. The sound sets all of Napoleon's alarms off, even as something newly hardwired into his body floods him with dopamine, the sheer and unfettered pleasure of hearing Illya's fill the space around them. He plies Illya out of the chair and takes on more of his weight than he's prepared to, but it's all in some kind of automatic drive, the motions of their escape.

"I make poor decisions with alcohol," Illya says, sounding very satisfied to have said it. "Very poor decisions."

"That," Napoleon says, "is very good to know."

"Don't think you can _trick_ me," Illya tells him. He pushes his mouth against Napoleon's hair, and that is far too odd, something is very wrong, something _fantastic_ or—not.

Napoleon grips him around the waist and decides to drop this in Gaby's lap. She has a better moral compass than Napoleon, and she probably loves Illya, in the same way that Napoleon does but nicer.

 

**vii.**

 

_He's acting drunk_ , Gaby mouths at him.

"I _know_ ," says Napoleon. "He says they've injected him with drugs. He said it's having a strong effect."

Wrapped in a wool blanket on the bench of the boat, Illya looks up at them both. His appearance hasn't changed from that of a man on the brink of falling asleep, but he's stayed with them, following their volley of words. "Are we going home now?" he asks.

Gaby presses his shoulder. She hasn't stopped touching him since Napoleon half-carried him through the entrance of the facility. "We're going back to London," she assures him. "The plane should be waiting for us."

"I don't want to go to my apartment," says Illya. "I like the hotels better."

"Er," says Napoleon.

"Because we are together," Illya adds.

Gaby opens her mouth, then closes it. She looks at Napoleon.

Napoleon shrugs.

Bending down to him, Gaby cups his uninjured cheek. "Illya," she says, not tender but kind, "we can be together at your apartment, too. If you want us to stay with you?"

"Yes," says Illya, and his countenance is spellbound, distractingly naked. There is more heart caught and flayed open in his eyes than Napoleon is entirely comfortable with seeing.

Whatever they were working on at the facility, Napoleon thinks, it had better burn with the rest of its walls. What it is giving them—this gift—he'd wanted them to earn it, this time.

It is supposed to be Peril working for it, but Napoleon has gotten it so wrong. He has completely misunderstood his own intentions. He's never had to go the hard way, to put in the time, and now even that has been taken from them; but they will be careful, and grateful, and good to him. They have the capacity.

Gaby, as if she reads his mind, kisses Illya on the bridge of his nose. "I think instead," she says, "we ought to go to mine."

"Yes," says Illya, trying to keep his eyes from crossing. He blinks at her rapidly. "That is better."

When Gaby smiles and steps back, Napoleon leans in and kisses the exact same patch of skin. He's rewarded with a muted _cowboy_ , and at least some things he has gotten right.

 

**viii.**

 

The boat trip back to mainland is punctuated with sudden bursts of vocalization from Illya's bench: he complains the waves are too choppy, that he can drive the boat better, that the moon is too bright. He also recites poetry in Russian as he stares down at the light skipping across the water. He tells Gaby she is beautiful and strong and modern, and he doesn't want to ever ruin that.

"Have you tried not talking?" Gaby asks.

Illya hesitates. "Do you not want me to talk?" he asks, and quiets.

Gaby covers her mouth and looks away, so that only Napoleon can tell that she's gutted. She recovers and squeezes Illya's hand. "Have you really never learned to dance?"

"My mother used to dance with me," he says, eyes hooded with sleep. "When I was a child. Dancing is for children."

"Your mother obviously didn't think so," Gaby says, even though Napoleon wishes he could stop her. He tucks in close to Illya's other side, for damage control. The last time he brought up the woman, breakfast had ended up on the floor.

"You remind me of my mother," Illya says, tracing the fall of her hair.

Gaby frowns at him.

"Not sure that's what she wants to hear, Peril," says Napoleon, feigning lightheartedness. "It's not the most romantic line. It's not even _a_ romantic line."

"She did what she had to," Illya continues, like he hasn't heard a word they've said. His head knocks gently against Napoleon's when the boat turns, and he seems a thousand miles left behind them. "She was very—beautiful. And good. She was a good mother. They say things about her. I had to look at those men and say nothing. But she was good, and she kept me safe."

Napoleon squeezes his knees tightly. He understands all at once, and he wishes he didn't.

"She always kissed my forehead three times," says Illya. "To bring us good fortune." He touches his own forehead, as if searching for the luck.

"I'm sorry," says Napoleon, and it's inadequate and it covers so little of what it needs to. He's sorry about what he said before. He's sorry about what he understands now. He's sorry that she's lost to them.

Illya turns to him. His eyes are so blue, even in the night. He buries his face in Napoleon's shoulder and inhales, and he stays there for the rest of the ride.

 

**ix.**

 

The plane is not waiting. The plane is grounded due to mechanical error and not even a truly decent German mechanic, who has dabbled in more than a few automobiles, can do much to speed the repairs. Gaby taps her fingers impatiently as she listens to Waverly over the telephone, glancing at Napoleon and Illya as if she expects them to disappear. "Understood," she says, and hangs up.

"Looks like you get your hotel room after all," she tells Illya. "We won't fly out until tomorrow. Do you need a doctor?"

Illya scoffs. It's so much like himself that Napoleon could punch him in relief.

"Tongue's a little loose," he says. "Do you have a wrench, chop-shop girl?"

Gaby wags her finger at him. "Tempting, tempting."

Illya smiles at her. The novelty is still new enough that Napoleon shifts, feeling it curl hot and full in his belly. He wants to bite that smile. He wants to taste it.

"I'll call for a cab," he says, clearing his throat. 

(He doesn't entirely hide the huskiness, though. He can hear Illya behind him as he takes the phone from Gaby, saying, "I like his voice very much. You do, too, yes?" And she's laughing, laughing, laughing, and it is going to be okay.)

 

**x.**

 

Napoleon buys out a suite on U.N.C.L.E.'s dime: lavish, robin egg blue curtains and suede sofas with brass buttons, a mirror-backed mini-bar, ornate lamps speckled with veins of silver, a bed that can fit two people with ease, three with some intimacy. What Waverly had said before—his mild emphasis on _commitment_ —the way he'd eyed Napoleon—he must know, and Napoleon gets a sulky twist of satisfaction from making him pay for it. As if Napoleon has any intention of going anywhere. As if Napoleon could leave, even if he wanted to.

He closes the door behind them and watches Gaby lead Illya to the sofa, drop him down, peel the blanket from his shoulders. What tethers Napoleon is intangible and grounding. It is a very short leash held by a very tall man and a woman with pistons clacking behind her teeth.

"Napoleon, get him some water," Gaby says. Her tone brooks no argument and he wouldn't dream of disappointing.

Illya presses into her hands, his eyes closed and lashes lit thin with gold against the lamplight. He takes a steadying breath, as if he's bracing himself for the second she lets go. She doesn't.

Napoleon goes and gets the water.

He chucks his tie in the bathroom and hangs it with the robe. Rolls up his shirt sleeves, unbuttons the top to give himself some air. Gaby glances up at him when he re-enters the main suite room and raises an eyebrow. Napoleon lifts the glass: _see how I've been a good boy_.

Illya says, "I am so thirsty." It sounds like gravel, like unfinished gems in the palm of Napoleon's hand.

He swallows, harder than he means to. "Wet your whistle, Peril," he says, handing over the glass, taking that extra heartbeat to ensure Illya doesn't drop the cargo. "Are you hungry? I've had service here before, maybe four years past. They had a peppercorn marbled ribeye good enough to make a grown man cry."

Illya drinks deeply, wetness gathering at the corner of his mouth. He drains the glass in one go, throat working. He gasps when it's gone; it's a nice gasp. The kind that goes to Napoleon's cock, despite himself.

"I think I would not want to eat alone while you watch me," Illya says. "That would be embarrassing to me."

Napoleon rubs his face and looks at Gaby. From the dark well of her eyes, she's imagining it, too, and putting it aside. Another day—a safer time, to sit back and indulge in watching him eat at their pleasure.

"More water?" he offers instead.

Illya hesitates, studying them both. He holds out the glass to Napoleon but doesn't let go. Their fingers are warm and pressed together, smudging the glass. "I am perhaps making a mistake," Illya says, halting. "This is best weathered—alone?"

Gaby sits next to him and takes his free hand, holding him by the wrist. "You aren't going to be left alone," she says, kissing his pulse point. She keeps her eyes open and on him. "And Napoleon will get you more water."

"All the water you want," Napoleon agrees, feeling his ears burn because this is not how he seduces. This isn't his suave, slick dance number, the coin-operated lies that always do their job. He's out of his element like this. But he goes to get the damned water.

When he's back, Gaby is stroking Illya's hair at the base of his neck. Illya, for his part, looks terrified and disturbed and happy.

"Go easy on him," Napoleon chides her, settling down into the cushion on his other side. He gives Illya the glass.

Gaby lifts her chin. "Don't you mean _us_?" she asks.

"I wouldn't be opposed," says Napoleon.

"Nothing about either of you is easy," Illya tells them. He drinks, slower than before, savoring each swallow. He taps the glass and the water ripples, and Napoleon realizes he does this on purpose just to see how it will move. "But compared to before?" Illya shakes his head. 

"Nice to know we're preferable to the KGB," says Napoleon. "Tell me, how do we rank next to Stalin?"

He is ignored. "I don't understand you and you make me very angry," Illya says, staring at the coral pink carpet. "I think you do these things on purpose. But it does not preclude that I love you."

The world goes swimmy. Napoleon blinks a few times at the coffee table done in blue lacquer and silver trim. He wipes his mouth. He fidgets with his hands in his lap. 

Gaby says, softly, "Those are big words, Illya."

"I know," he says. "Do not worry. I don't think I will say them again."

 

**xi.**

 

He thinks he is being _kind_ to them.

He thinks he's giving them a way _out_.

There is an extraordinary emptiness in Napoleon, as if someone has scooped out the tacky tangle of his emotional intimacy and thrown it away, an internal sphere where he has perfect control. The strange calm is what deceives him—he's so rarely been _truly_ angry—he barely feels his hands curl into fists, his jaw set, his teeth grit. He shouldn't be angry. Why? Why, when Illya has given them exactly what he believes they want to hear?

(Because it isn't—because no one should say they love Napoleon as if it were an obituary, a black-and-white printed mistake.)

 

**xii.**

 

Gaby's lips are pursed. She looks as ill-tempered as Napoleon feels, and twice as likely to do something about it. It would be easy to let her call the shots and lead the show. But she's been doing that, and it's led them to here, and Napoleon has to step into the game at some point and lay out his cards.

"Peril," he says, breezy and false, "I don't think that's something we can unhear."

Illya makes a face, like he wants to scowl at him but can't. "No, is easy. I do this for most of what you—when you say—I do this thing—" He stops. It is a sobering reminder and confirmation of what the drug has done to him, because Illya had been trying to make a joke, or something like one, and he can't. Not when it's untrue.

And now, Illya seems to realize, as well. He shrinks into the sofa, which is comical given his size.

The wariness waylays some of Napoleon's temper. He exhales heavy. Rubs his face. "Illya," he says, the name a rarity on his tongue, "if you can be honest with us, we can be honest with you."

"Maybe that's the ticket," says Gaby. "Maybe this would be better if we were on even level." She runs her fingers through Illya's hair, traces the curve of his ear. She's thinking quickly on her feet, assessing and putting them back together in different ways. That expression—he's come to adore it. "What do you think, Illya? Should we each get a question that we must answer truthfully? I get to ask a question of you. Napoleon gets to ask a question of you. And you," she kisses his cheek, "ask a question of us."

Illya shakes his head. "I don't like games."

"It's not a game, Peril, unless only one of us stands to win." Napoleon presses their thighs together and curls his hand over Illya's knee into the heat of him. Immediately Illya tenses up, but he can't hold it, not for long. Instead, he makes an unidentifiable noise and relaxes between them.

"It's more like chess," Napoleon says. "Playing for a greater intellectual understanding and achievement. Finding new choices to make."

"Even in chess, only one color wins," says Illya.

"Then why do you play against yourself?" Gaby asks, unbuttoning his collar for him. Illya catches her hand, but when she stares him down, he doesn't stop her. Her fingers dip into his collarbone and map a thread-spun scar.

"One question," says Illya, hoarse.

"Just one," she confirms.

"Please ask me first," he says, and his hands are shaking. "Yours will be hardest."

Someone with a cart rolls down the hallway and they all tense, waiting. The wheels bump over the carpet. The cart takes its time, and then is gone. At this moment, Napoleon realizes Illya's hands are trembling more violently and he takes them, without thinking, without cause. He squeezes them between his own and digs Illya's watch into his wrist as a reminder to stay in the moment.

 

**xiii.**

 

In the hotel room, the computer disc a grotesque weight between them, Napoleon had almost shot the man.

He had almost shot him, and instead he'd thrown him the watch and seen Illya's eyes thaw from winter. In a single act, the rage was derailed, the intention drained like spoiled milk down the sink. Illya, when he looked back up from his wrist, had been ready to listen. He had been ready to trust. The threat of the Gulag remained on his back, but he stopped, and he gave over, and he had given Napoleon the lead.

_It's only a watch,_ Napoleon had wanted to say. _That kind of weakness will get you killed, Peril._

In hindsight, Napoleon's instincts are spot on. When he imprints the watch in Illya's wrist bones, he sees the quiet descend on him, the way manic energy dissipates like cigarette smoke swept away by a passing train. He wonders if the sour-faced handler from the KGB knew about this trick.

The sick-blooded fury that leaks into his arteries at the idea means he must never, ever ask.

 

**xiv.**

 

Illya is not wrong. Somehow Napoleon had expected Gaby's question to be glib, to fall from her like a curse, much in the way his own initial instinct demands. Or maybe, Napoleon is still waiting for them to fall back into their teasing.

But Gaby unbuttons Illya's shirt with the same quiet content that Illya had once rubbed her feet: she knows the weight and worth of what's given to her. She places her palm against Illya's sternum, twitches her fingers in a way that Napoleon recognizes—trying to find his heartbeat—shaping his breaths into her fist. "Illya, you don't have to answer a question if you don't want to." She pauses. "Or can't."

"I understand," says Illya.

"Very well." Gaby draws the words into her on a whistle and lifts her chin. "Illya, how can we make you happy?"

Napoleon immediately understands why Illya asked Gaby to go first. It is the worst of all questions. It's not even one Illya would know to ask, to prepare for, and what does it say that Napoleon would have to admit to the same? He reaches for Gaby, unable to help himself, and his thumb strokes the scratchy pantyhose over her kneecap. Now that he is allowing himself to touch, he cannot stop. He wants to be on the carpet, learning the dimples in her legs.

_We almost left you alone in Berlin_ , he thinks. The enormity of the idea is staggering. 

Between them, Illya is as still as dead things are. It's a good thing Gaby has her hands on him—she pinches his throat lightly. "Breathe," she says.

Illya stutters, and does.

"I don't know if I can answer that," he says, the English almost mangled to the point of incomprehension.

Napoleon smiles suggestively. "Too many possible answers?" When Illya looks pained, he softens, apologetic. "You heard her, Peril. If you can't answer, if that's not something you're able to articulate, it's no disservice to us. She's asking because you're not the easiest read in the room. And we do want to make you happy," he adds, because why the hell not, in for a penny.

Illya looks at Napoleon. He says nothing. Convulsively, he squeezes the black leather band around his wrist, milking the color out of his veins.

"Look at us, being so truthful," says Napoleon. "What do you know? I could get on board with this. How's this one for size—I, personally, would steal anything you wanted to have for yourself. I would even put it back where it belonged if you were angry as a hornet afterward."

"Is that so?" asks Gaby, speculative.

"Are you getting some ideas?" Napoleon asks her, pleased.

Illya looks between them and the exasperation is welcome, familiar, and transformative. He says, "No one is letting Solo steal anything. That is unprofessional and we are now _law enforcement_."

"Tell me then," says Napoleon. He lean in, suddenly serious. "Tell me what we _can_ do for you."

Gaby glances at him with unmistakable approval. That must have been well-done, then.

Maybe because it's been rephrased as an order—maybe because he's afraid Napoleon actually _will_ go out thieving into the night if he can't answer—Illya makes a pensive sound and considers it. He covers Gaby's hand, still on his chest, with his own. He makes a few aborted attempts at speaking, then shakes his head.

"Back in Istanbul," he says. "I was happy then. The first time we took a room together. You didn't ask me, and I would have said no. But I was also glad." He closes his eyes, as if that makes it easier. "Watching the boats sail in. You were both drinking. I had nothing to worry about except that, and how you looked at me."

He says, and it's like a torrent, the clean relief of rain, "I was happy the first night when you were dancing and you wanted a partner. I did not think I could be that partner. You took my hands. I was happy in London, when we went to dinner and told stories about our handlers. Cowboy almost tricked us into not paying the bill. I was so angry—and I was happy."

Napoleon is going to steal him something, anyway. This is unbearable.

"I was happy we worked so well together," says Illya. His shoulders gradually go lax, his tension eroding, crumbling at their heels. He can look at them now. "I was happy when you came for me tonight. I am..."

"With just that?" Gaby asks, a fissure as fine as a needle in her voice.

"Just that?" Illya asks. "My handler in the KGB tasked me with keeping you trapped behind the wall. He tasked me with killing Cowboy if I couldn't retrieve the disc from him." He locks his fingers between Gaby's, as if he needs the anchor, as if he's aching for it. "But for now, I am able to keep you. For now, I can wake up some mornings and know what it is to see the knots you've made of the sheets. This is..."

"I think what Miss Teller is trying to say," Napoleon tells him, "is that you can have more."

"So you tell me," says Illya. "But you asked what you could do to make me happy."

It's more than he's ever heard Illya say in one stretch, but Napoleon is hungry for more. Words may not be enough. It may not even be enough to lay him down and draw all of his words out with tongue and teeth. Napoleon may need to learn additional languages—stretch time out across the years they yet have—keep a written ledger that breaks down the meaning between syllables, decodes the apparent simplicity. 

"Is it okay?" Illya asks Gaby.

"Is it okay," repeats Gaby, leaning in to kiss him long and deep. She pushes him back into the sofa upholstery with her weight and urgency. Even for Illya, it is answer enough.

 

**xv.**

 

There are at least four expensive, historically significant chess sets that Napoleon has come across in his career of _acquisition_. He remembers exactly where he sold each of them. He knows how to reacquire at least two, with minimal fuss.

He also knows some books—not his usual trade, but Napoleon has seen the way Illya breathes in the scent of old tome—the reverent care he uses to turn pages, how cautious he is of creasing spines—books would be easy to get and have several hours worth of payoff, and Illya may not even become suspicious because _paper_ , how much could it truly have cost them?

The first time Napoleon pauses in front of a painting in a gallery in London and thinks, _He would hang this in the bedroom_ , is perhaps the moment he realizes he's far surpassed the point of no return. _She would love it,_ he thinks, imagining Gaby curling her hair around a fingertip and smiling up at the acrylics. The thickness on his tongue surprises him. The sharp, addictive desire to _take_ and build the daydream out of what materials he has access to is brutal, a need he had thought was growing dormant and staid.

From then on, every necklace is one that Gaby may wear. Every priceless lamp could brighten the apartment they do not even own or share. Napoleon keeps his sticky fingers to himself.

(But he continues to collect in his mind, and they always laugh at him in those daydreams. They laugh and they roll him into bed and Napoleon learns what it is to hoard.)

 

**xvi.**

 

By the time Gaby lets him up for air, Illya's cheeks are crabapple red and his mouth is bitten to match. He rakes his hair back, unsteady. He's trying to appear disgruntled, but he's not hiding the wobble of his smile very well. It changes the shape of him. "You're always leading me," he says. "Chop-shop girl."

Gaby faux-bites his nose. "You don't know what you're doing. If I don't teach you the steps, you'll bruise my toes."

"You are not going to slap me again," says Illya, squinting at her in suspicion. "I will not allow it."

"Now that is very unfair," says Napoleon, wetting his own lips. "I've gotten lost in this conversation."

"I did slap him," Gaby admits, wiggling her shoulders in a way that proclaims she would like out of her dress. Napoleon deliberates between what he would enjoy more—hearing the story behind Illya's wariness or shimmying that zipper down Gaby's spine—but he hasn't forgotten the answer he's owed or the way his gut had corkscrewed when Gaby got her nails into Illya's cheek and held him in place. The faint imprint of crescent moons rapidly deteriorates, at home with the scar nesting next to Illya's eye.

Illya looks at him. He reaches up and touches his cheek, like he knows exactly what Napoleon is hungering after. When he raises an eyebrow at Napoleon, it speaks volumes.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm waiting my turn," says Napoleon. "Ladies first. That's one of the golden rules."

"You don't listen to _rules_ ," Illya says.

Gaby plucks the empty water glass from the table and leans back into the sofa arm, pressing the cool surface to her temple. She smiles at them. "He does when he makes them. Now you had a question for Illya, didn't you, Solo?" The emphasis on his last name is teasing and low, a deeper register. "I think you've had a question since the moment you met him."

In fact, Napoleon has an entire rolodex of questions he'd like to ask, given that Illya is at their mercy and beck and call: loaded dice for which he'll pay, feathers to add to his cap, the earnest desire to find something gleaming and beautiful that can remain all his own, a piece of Illya to pocket. None of these questions are safe. They are wasteful or draw tight at the throat. He doesn't want to take from Illya those things he can ill-afford to give. He doesn't want to cheat.

It isn't that Napoleon believes he's a bad man, per se. It's only—being with them, he is aware on the periphery that he could be a better one.

"Well, let's see now. Let me take a gander at you," he says in all seriousness. He cups the side of Illya's neck and guides him, and this is how he discovers the seashell smooth patch of skin behind Illya's ear, the bristle of shadow at his jaw, how a man can be two different faces at once. Illya tracks his gaze, frowning as if he's worried about what judgments Napoleon might make.

Oh, Napoleon knows better than to make assumptions ( _or maybe he doesn't_ ). But if he pays enough attention, someday he can decipher Illya Kuryakin.

Today, he only needs to ask the question to do so.

Temptation wars but slinks into insidious underbrush. Napoleon gives Illya a tender, punctuated kiss to chase its heels. It's the kind of kiss he doesn't often bother with in bed, so he's out of practice, but Illya stiffens and then sags, falls into Napoleon with the same errant clumsiness he uses to pick locks. If he doesn't know what to do with a woman, he's completely off in dark waters with a man. But he tastes like Gaby's lipstick and tepid water and the metallic of another human's iron—and Napoleon will teach him, anyway—he'll lick into his mouth and show him where those hands can go—the world is their oyster and tonight the first of many, if Napoleon takes the house.

He kisses Illya again: matter-of-fact benedictions on his chin, his jaw, his forehead. He nearly kisses him three times there. Pauses on the second, presses their heads together, breathes in his air.

"I think I've got my question," says Napoleon. "Want to take a guess first?"

"No," says Illya, the word a blotted ache against him.

"No? You're all work and no fun, Peril."

"No," says Illya, "I want you to kiss me again. And again." He chokes on it, but he says it.

Napoleon's stomach swoops and he _wants_. With something unholy, he wants. 

"We have plenty of time for that," says Gaby, pragmatic. Her knee bumps into Illya's side. From the flush high in her ears, she's not untouched by his need, but Napoleon finds this is a secret of women: they bask in the wanting and spend slow, an unraveling sun that does not know how to die. In burning out, they are reborn.

Napoleon leans back to give Illya some space. She's not wrong; if he gets wound up now, it won't be long until he's got them both sunk in the pillows. He raises one finger: _a moment please_.

They give him a moment. They do not even tease him about it.

He exhales, hyperaware of the scent of his own sweat, the salt of sea on the both of them. "That's a promise I'll hold you to, Miss Teller," he says. "I don't know if you appreciate the strength of will I'm exerting right now."

Gaby hooks her lip between her teeth, spearing her smile. "You might be surprised," she tells him, knees sliding together. Her hips shift against the cushion.

He can concede that.

Caught on the line between them, Illya taps his fingertips on his thighs, slow and precise, perhaps keeping time to the flinches of his pulse, perhaps to that same music only he can hear. It's getting so that Napoleon can tell the difference in that nervous tic; for the time being, it is bringing him some measure of comfort. 

"My question," Napoleon says, "is a little more practical."

 

**xvii.**

 

His father's nature is to be thrifty from the cradle to his grave. He is a man who patches the holes in his shoes and darns his work clothes until the fabric frays, splitting under the needle. For lunch, he only ever eats the same sandwich. For breakfast, he won't give so much as a penny for coffee if he can produce something of a similar composition using hot water and old beans. They are not poor, of course, and Napoleon lives well and happily and fat in his cheeks, but it is easy to forget.

What he tells Napoleon is this: be a little wise, and a lot careful. The careful is so that even when you aren't wise, you sure seem it.

He's not talking about money. He's talking about Napoleon's mother, or what was once Napoleon's mother. She is gone from them like a cut-out paper doll, leaving nothing but space in which to imagine. Maybe she's with another man now. Maybe she's living it up in the Big Apple and eating more than tomatoes on bread. Maybe she has another shiny sweet boy that she'll send off to war, and maybe Napoleon palms a cigarette off of his corpse, and maybe he has her eyes but he can't remember.

But Napoleon's old man has always done right by him. So Napoleon stays in the gray threadbare stage of Europe after the war turns, and he is a little wise, but mostly he is a lot careful. Every girl that gets in with Napoleon Solo knows—it's one hell of a night, yessir, one hell of a night. One hell of a night and the best taste in shoes, but that's because he's a walker. He'll kiss and he'll tell and he'll walk out the window as if he were never there at all.

(But then Gaby dumps a cup of Scotch-laced water over his head on the beach. She flourishes it, triumphant. She kicks sand at his belly and he has no feet under him at all, only waves yanking at his ankles, only eroding land sinking low.)

 

**xviii.**

 

And Illya—when does Napoleon know?

Is it the lonely, besotted way he watches Gaby when she pulls Napoleon into the surf? Or does it go further back, seeding in the moment Napoleon breaks the surface of the water with Illya's stuttered heartbeat under his palm, or worse, the ghostly lines of light crosshatching the bleak ocean and illuminating Illya against its backdrop? In Mombasa, Illya calls them both _my problems_ and it sends a charge down Napoleon's lumbar.

In Egypt, Illya insists on cleaning all of Napoleon's guns, as if he's not any good at it himself. "Watch and learn, Cowboy," he says, wearing his hat despite the curdling hot sun. Sweat makes his hair damp, his broad shoulders pink.

Napoleon sits back and watches and thinks about fairy cakes. His drink sits in his lap, untouched, a sign of the end of days.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize; I know this is a long time in coming. But this marks the story complete! Same warnings apply for this chapter.

**xix.**

 

"You will not draw it out," Illya says, but the warning is tempered with the way he looks at Napoleon's mouth in a caged sort of longing. It is not unlike how he becomes captivated by Gaby, caught on her graces.

No, Napoleon has no desire to draw this out. It would be kinder to inflict the damage all at once. However, he kisses Illya to soften the blow to come, and simply to have the pleasure of doing so again. 

What a wonderful idea—that at some point in his life, Napoleon may spend entire hours kissing Illya. And perhaps that’s why the question had come to him, dogged on the heels of that lovely false memory of sun pooled on blankets, limbs knotted like saplings, how many teeth it would take to waken Illya’s mouth to poppy red. It’s only necessary reconnaissance, really. Illya would do the same to him. Probably.

“Cowboy,” murmurs Illya, and clasps Napoleon’s fingers against his jawline. _She’s right_ , Napoleon thinks, _he has cold hands._

And now, he is indeed drawing it out.

"If we take you to bed," Napoleon says, "if we commit to this course of action, what happens when your leash is pulled? When you were talking about being with us, you said 'for the moment.' In Italy, you nearly shot me over a backup disc when that leash was yanked." He can feel Illya draw back from him and lets him, loathes the inches as they tear away. "We may be Waverly's shepherds for the time being, but I know better than to believe the KGB has unstuck all of their claws."

Illya is a storm: black and overcast, then ashen gray, the clamminess of rainfall leeching the color from his cheeks. He is congealed ice. He no longer looks as though he’s hanging on Napoleon’s every breath.

It's actually, on the whole, worse than Napoleon imagined it would be.

"You have to understand," he says, "I'm asking for your sake, Peril. There may come a day they ask you to clean up shop."

"You think he'd hurt either of us," says Gaby, and the frigid betrayal in her voice is meant for Napoleon but it is Illya who makes a wounded noise. It's the kind of noise that sucks all the air out of a room and belts around a man's windpipe.

"No. _No_ , of course not."

"Then how can you ask that?" she demands.

"He barely trusted me," Napoleon tells her, gives it to her straight, "and he decided he'd rather burn the disc and suffer the Gulag than shoot me."

Illya jerks back. Then he lurches off of the sofa and puts distance between them, his complexion shot, his motions halting. He bangs his calf into the coffee table and the glass rattles.

"I _know_ ," Napoleon says to him, the itch beneath his skin to get close, to pull Illya back into the space between them, veering on painful. He doesn't realize he's clenching his fists until his knuckles crack. "Waverly made it pretty clear, even without saying as much directly. If he hadn't brought you in, you'd be enjoying some Soviet hospitality at its worst right now.”

"It was my decision," Illya says.

Napoleon tries to smile, but it's tight and lined in steel. "You didn't even _like_ me," he says.

Gaby is upright, uncompromising. She must see the picture now before them because she glances at the telephone—he knows she wants to call Waverly, demand confirmation as a foot in the door to the greater conversation—she must be cursing the leverage she's already given up—and it's a conversation they _need_ to have. They are keeping agents; they are in for the long haul. It is not about land boundaries and allegiances any longer. There are lines on maps, and there is a record playing in a hotel room, and he will choose the record every damned time.

Illya says, "You had the same orders that I did, Cowboy."

"Of course I had orders," Napoleon says, exasperated, "but I wouldn't have gone _through_ with them and Sanders knows that. My specialty is extraction. That's what the CIA demanded, and that's what I gave them. Can I pull a trigger? You saw that for yourself. But it's a distasteful business—I'm not particularly skilled at it—the war was plenty for me, thanks."

"I am skilled at it," says Illya, woodenly.

"Funnily enough, I'm not dead."

Illya stops at the window, the feet between them as long a rope as he can seemingly manage. He puts his hands and face against the glass pane and heaves, a cloud bursting beneath his mouth. He doesn't want them to see his face. It's too bad, because Napoleon doesn't have to.

"They're going to give you an order someday," he says, quieter, for Illya’s benefit. "I'm only asking what you're going to do when that day comes."

Gaby stands, but she holds herself in place. She trusts Napoleon too much—he doesn't know what he's doing half of the time. The glass dangles, pinched between her fingers, her prints developing like an overexposed Polaroid on its surface.

"I don't understand what you want to hear," Illya says, agony and constrained anger pitting his voice so low that Napoleon can barely catch his words. "I don't know why you asked me this."

"I _want_ ," he says, "for you to tell me that you won't slink off like some solitary dying dog, Illya. I want your express oath—your word—that you'll come to us."

Illya is silent.

"I guess it's not really a question," admits Napoleon.

 

**xx.**

 

Here is what else happens in Egypt: the river swells in the dark and Gaby shoots a man pointblank in the face. His cheek, his saggy jowls, his widow's peak—all blown away. Her hands are steady, but her teeth gnash. She looks feral in the shadows. It is only fear, and a sudden understanding that men do not need names to dwell in your soul. Napoleon, too, remembers that lesson.

The man she shoots, he had put a gun to Illya's ear. "This one is too complicated to bring with us," he'd said to his partners.

"You mean he's big-boned," said Napoleon.

Gaby hadn't hesitated.

Napoleon takes care of the other two with minimal fuss, bringing their party back to a comfortable three. The noise is only bleats in the night. When she lowers her weapon, she goes to Illya, not the body. This is a good sign in an agent. Also in a friend. "Let me see," she says, twisting his head around to examine the gash glinting eggplant purple in the limited visibility.

"Are you all right?" Illya asks, earnest and searching. He lets her manhandle him. He always does.

Napoleon relaxes, holstering his Browning. He would have taken the shot sooner, had he known. But she's always been aware that this is the trade in the game: lives and secrets and data regarding both. Sooner or later, something has to burn.

"I'm angry," she tells Illya, wrestling him to his feet. "It's going to take a lot of alcohol and radio time to make it up to me."

"It was a good shot," Illya says. "Effective."

"What about mine?" Napoleon asks, cavalier. He bolsters Illya from one side and gets an elbow to his ribs for his trouble.

"I can _walk_ , Cowboy, better than you can aim."

"Good, because we still have no idea who sent these men," says Gaby. She lugs his weight back onto Napoleon and stomps over to the bodies. They watch as she frisks them, tossing crumpled bills impatiently over her shoulder. Her ankle has collected a long scratch the shape of a question mark.

Against Napoleon's shoulder, Illya is warm and heavy. Napoleon thinks, _This one is on a short trip to permanent retirement._ It's a very bad idea to get close to a man waking to numbered days.

(It isn't until he's in the shower at the hotel, washing away the smell of gunpowder, that Napoleon's vision tumbles and he staggers into the tiles. The shampoo is scented with eucalyptus. It burns his eyes as he rubs the suds away, panting on the image of a hole through Illya's head, a harbinger in every direction.)

 

**xxi.**

 

"I can't tell the future," says Illya. His back is set against them, shoulders stiff. It's as if an anvil is pressing him down into the floor, an invisible weight that strains his spine and makes him crawl in on his belly. Napoleon knows that feeling. He's slipped enough anvils in his time.

"Illya," says Gaby, deceptive in her calm, "give it to us."

He shakes his head.

Gaby rounds the coffee table, blocking him in. "Illya," she says, only that, and Napoleon admires how well she pretends Illya's answering flinch does not dig into her malleable places and bleed her out. She gets her hands on him, but he will not be pulled into her embrace.

"I will not hurt you," he says. "Please. I promise that. What they ask me to do—I will make my own choice. Like with disc," he adds, accent thickening, as if it will help at all to bury the words.

"I don't think we ever doubted it," hedges Napoleon. "More that—you don't act like we can take care of ourselves."

Illya does look at him, then—and oh boy, is it a look.

"I think what Napoleon is trying to say," Gaby says, "is that we need your assurance you will come to us, if it happens. You won't try to handle this on your own. You'll keep yourself safe for us."

"It's the only time I'll ever know, for sure, that you're telling the truth," says Napoleon, and he's sorry for it.

Illya yanks out of Gaby's arms. He inches back along the row of windows to the corner of the room. This isn't what Napoleon had wanted. This isn't right. But he doesn't know what to do—how to turn the foul-up on its head—and worse, they have uncovered the burnt wire but have no way of soldering it. Illya is just sparking. He's exposed. He rubs his arm like he's hoping to hurt it, and Napoleon is two seconds from saying _forget it_ and _please don't I'm sorry_.

"You do not know," forces Illya.

He lets it hang there. They wait.

"You do not know," Illya tells them, crumpling, "what you are talking about. When they come—when they take me—"

And it snaps into place, like lightening caught on the eaves of a rooftop, like the first day Napoleon picked up a canvas and held it to light.

"Peril," he says, and because it's not enough, " _Illya_." He's out of his seat and he knocks a lamp out of its base mold trying to get there fast enough, to beat the gunshot, to take the fall.

"He should have left us! He should have _left us_ before he dragged us down with him—"

Napoleon has him: his wrists, bony and big, the cutting circumference of the watch. He doesn't know how to contain Illya's past. The breadth is unfathomable; it climbs over his towering height and swallows the sky over him. What Napoleon can do is hold onto him, and find his mouth, and kiss him. He can pull that flurry of noise into himself. He can let the ache unravel them both.

Struggling against him, Illya backs them both up into the wall. He jams his hands into Napoleon's shoulder and pushes. He makes a wretched noise, and then another, against Napoleon's teeth. In the stalled minute between each, he _gives_ , and Napoleon presses him into the wallpaper and keeps him together with everything he's got. He kisses him until Illya stops trying to talk, until Illya's truths scar his bottom lip.

"Listen to me," Napoleon breathes into him, too close to see his features with any accuracy. "Listen to me, you are not your father."

He can feel Gaby's arm snake past him, smell her nail polish against Illya's skin. She's stroking his cheek.

"We are not your parents," he says, because it bears repeating. "For one, we have guns, and fake passports, and more monsters under our beds than any agency wants to deal with." The flippancy falls flat. He pushes past it, lets something real sneak into his voice. If anyone deserves to hear it, it's Illya. "Are you listening to me? You can't drag us down with you, Illya—we're already in the black. We're here with you. We're here with you."

"Coming into this—you—we had full disclosure," says Gaby. "We've already seen each other at our worst."

Illya does shove them away, then—one heave and Napoleon stumbles back into Gaby—but he turns into the wall and draws back his fist. He punches the plaster once, twice. He doesn't make a sound. It knocks a few things loose in Napoleon, anyway.

His violence is brief. It only lasts long enough for Illya to sway, fingers clenching and unclenching on a gluey paste of white powder and blood. Gaby ghosts her palm across his forehead in something not unlike a blessing, ignoring the way he avoids their gazes.

"Are you with us?" she asks him.

He shivers, eyes glassy and gone. When she asks again, he nods.

 

**xxii.**

 

"You wouldn't keep his watch if you regretted being in his life," says Napoleon, the only thing he has left to say by the time they get Illya stripped and bandaged. He sits on the edge of the bed in cotton sleep pants with Vaseline coated thickly over his knuckles. The sleepiness is back, drawing his head down low.

"It does not make it better," Illya says.

Gaby's pantyhose are tangled on the carpet. She sits beside Illya and strokes his arm, the long blue veins beneath his skin. "You can love your father and still abhor him," she says, and well, she would know.

Napoleon dips his head. "I'm sorry."

"No," says Illya, sliding to his left. He looks so tired. Whatever fumes he’s running on, they’re dissipating. "You are right to ask. If either of you would... I know I would want..."

Napoleon sinks down on the mattress and pulls out his tie; he draws Illya's attention to it, and it feels like he's doing a magic trick. "Let's call it good on my question," he says. "I'm already in the doghouse with Miss Teller."

Gaby makes a non-committal sound. It's the sort of sound that means Napoleon is going to be paying for this for a very long time, probably out of his pocketbook and his dignity alike.

But Illya surprises them both. "I can't make any promises," he says. He touches Napoleon's hairline—the temples that will go gray in the way of his father, probably—so light as to barely be felt. "But if you are still..."

Ah. "We will still."

"Then," says Illya, "I can at least leave you a trail."

And he grins, boyish and smug. Napoleon is so delighted with him—with the white of his teeth and the hunch of his shoulders—that if he hadn't already been a goner, this could have been the split second that changed everything. 

(It's like having a hot poker cracking open his ribs. It's like having a winning hand at poker without counting the cards. It's hearing the tinny radio proclaim the war is over, and it's time the boys come home. It’s Van Gogh: stars burst in a chaotic sky and their gravity begins to draw in the dark.)

 

**xxiii.**

 

Here is what Napoleon learns in the war: he is not always a good person, but the world is full of not-good people, so he is in excellent company.

God help him, but he believes it, all the years of his life. He spends himself on luxuries he can't afford and women who need another pearl in their necklace to admire, and takes what he wants because what he wants is handsome, rare, fulfilling. He shoots when the C.I.A. tells him to shoot because prison lacks all of those qualities in spades. Years pass, and Napoleon doesn't get to know anyone long enough to appreciate more than the superficial. He only knows what he likes.

"It smells like feet," is what Gaby says at his plate of risotto, wrinkling her nose. She still has engine grease beneath her fingernails and her hair is a mess.

"Expensive feet," he says, charmed despite himself. She is a woman who has no use for surface feelings—everything Gaby feels, she feels deeply, and winds into barbed wire around her hand to defend herself from anything less. She is carpentered into layers and she sees straight through them. There is no definition.

Months later, holed up in a ramshackle safe house in Prague, Napoleon makes the risotto again and Gaby drinks two beers before she will even touch it. Illya eats like a man with a bottomless appetite, but he betrays no actual appreciation or enjoyment over the meal. When he cleans his plate for the last time, he leaves some rice stuck to the fork.

"It's wasted on you both," says Napoleon, rubbing his forehead.

"I ate," Illya points out, as if it means something. 

Much, much later, Napoleon realizes it does. 

 

**xxiv.**

 

"It doesn't seem very fair to call quits now," Napoleon tells him, testing himself as he pushes Illya's hair back from his forehead. The heat of another person is always a magnet: he fills his bed with it, his arms. "You haven't asked your question of us yet."

"I'm tired," says Illya, and far from inching away, he presses his head against Napoleon's palm and closes his eyes. "I want to sleep now, not talk."

"He's right, though," Gaby tells him. "It doesn't seem fair like that."

"Have you taken a drug that stops you from lying?" asks Illya.

"No. Obviously not."

"Then today or tomorrow, it does not matter when I ask—only that I can." The breath he expels into Napoleon's wrist is less than a sigh, but it speaks volumes. "Maybe," he adds, "I would like to save this question. For a time I must know the truth." 

Gaby steals Illya away, touching his cheek and drawing him to her. "My darling," she says, the endearment its first, a word that ought to have been stilted on her tongue but isn't. From the look of her face, she is even more surprised than Napoleon, the ease of it, the depth—it is rooted in something much more complex than tenderness. "My darling," she says again, "I think you've missed the point."

Illya swallows, and she must feel it, because even Napoleon can feel it. It's a cut in his heartbeat, a scratched record.

He wonders what it would take to make Gaby call _him_ darling. Oh, the possibilities.

"What point is that?" Illya asks.

"We told you this was no game," she says. "It was a promise, to be as honest with you as you have been with us, to learn more about each other. To be good to you, and for you, and for us." She looks at Napoleon, and yes, there is something in the sweet wry curve of her mouth that speaks to a _darling_ if he works hard enough for it, breaks his back bending on her word. "We work in the business of lies now. That doesn't mean we have to bring them home with us."

It isn’t a life Napoleon’s known, not for a very long time. Judging from the look on Illya’s face, it may not be one he knows at all. But Napoleon is willing to learn. 

“I think,” he says, testing that water, “this wholesome stuff could actually be what we’re looking for, Peril. You know. The real deal. The bee’s knees, that sort of thing.”

Illya mouths the word ‘wholesome’ at him, like he can’t quite believe Napoleon has it in his arsenal. 

"Yes,” Gaby says, “the real deal. And that means you can ask whatever you want, whenever you want, however many times you want." She kisses Illya, puts color back into him. "So ask today, or ask tomorrow, but you don't need to hoard, Illya. I will give you a free pass on the first one: I love you. Maybe before, I thought I loved you and disliked you, but now I believe I like you as much as I love you, and that's never happened before."

It's not a sonnet. It's hardly poetry. But it reaches into Napoleon and rearranges him, deftly and without hurting him. He knows, without asking, that the words are meant for Illya but they're also meant for him. 

Illya looks as though the words are sinking in with the weight of stones, like he might collapse beneath them. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and a streak of Vaseline ends up on his jaw. Then, he kisses Gaby like miniature puncture wounds: small, fleeting, indelicate. He says something in Russian for which Napoleon has no translation. The Vaseline goes everywhere. Illya's blood goes with it, like a talisman. 

The way Illya cups her side, his palm so close to her breast but not touching, makes Gaby shiver and groan from her belly, and Napoleon knows in that instant that his wanting is nothing compared to hers. She would tear Illya to shreds if she were anything less than in control. He's wrinkling her dress.

God, they're going to be marvelous when the time comes. Napoleon's never consummated anything—he's had plenty of sex, even with more than one person in the bed if he counts Burgundy—and he's never tasted anticipation like this, more full-bodied than wine. When Illya drags his teeth over Gaby's lip as he pulls back, Napoleon is the one to bite down on a noise.

"Are you only going to look at me like that?" Illya asks. He's studying them both, seeming uncertain about where to land.

"Thought you were tired," says Napoleon.

"I am," Illya agrees, then frowns. "But I want..."

With an iron will, Napoleon shucks what's left of his unknotted tie and tosses it over the suite's vanity mirror. "You're tired," he announces, "so we're going to talk or we're going to sleep. Probably sleep."

"You're turning cheek to a tumble?" Gaby asks.

"I think it's a good idea to demonstrate our commitment.” He unbuttons his shirt. It's only the pattern of getting undressed for bed, though, and nothing more.

Illya looks at him as if he's lost his head somewhere, but Napoleon means every damn word. That's how much this whole business has got to him. Gaby approves, and that's probably what gives him the most encouragement. He can keep it in his pants one more night. Maybe two.

But then there is doubt in Illya, a certain way he bites down on his cheek, and he says, "Cowboy, if you are... If, with men, you don't..."

And it's not that. It's not that, and Napoleon won't let him think about it. He wishes he had Gaby's way of saying things, but he doesn't, and his own way isn't going to work for this.

"I'll get you all the water you want," he says, the words all wrong, stuck like bread to a baking tray and thick in his throat. He doesn't know better ones. "I'll... Whatever you want, I'll get it for you. That's how much I want you, Peril. But if you want the truth, once this is all over and we're at our best, I'm not going to let either of you leave the mattress for _days_."

Illya stares at him, and says nothing.

Napoleon tries to smile, but what happens to his face doesn’t feel at all similar to his usual trademark charm. He leans in and puts his palm on Illya's stomach, feeling the muscles contract and tense. "With men? Some, but not much," he says. "With you? I'm going to _ruin_ you, Peril."

Shuddering, Illya grabs his wrist and holds him there, and that’s as much open invitation as Napoleon's likely to ever get. Behind him, over his shoulder, Gaby winds in and nips at his ear with little to no delicacy. Her hand curls around to cover Illya's, and between them, Illya's fingers lose their grip and he lets himself be held.

"I think," Gaby breathes, "I'm going to enjoy that."

 

**xxv.**

 

There are no certain things in the world. Napoleon has impressed the lesson at the forefront of his mind because it’s doubly true for a spy. He is aware, in the way that birds recognize incoming storms from a sudden drop in air pressure days ahead of the calamity, that most agents don’t live to see retirement. Those who do never exactly leave service, either—not entirely. It is a half-life, one eye open, a packed suitcase beneath the bed. He hadn’t understood the full scope of what was at stake when the C.I.A. came calling, but neither had he relished the idea of prison. Would he make the same choice if given the opportunity? Yes. For them, yes. For other reasons, too.

So while there are no certain things in the world, Napoleon has a quiet daydream. It is a fickle, ridiculous thing. It hums discordant in the back of his skull, and sometimes the noise gets louder when he’s in a real pickle, and other times it submerges until the echoes thrum along his bones. 

He dreams: a townhome, stylish and full of clean lines, with pockets that Illya has stamped out as his own in defense against modern sensibility and style, and a wide granite kitchen counter for Napoleon’s patronage and where Gaby can leave her half-eaten leftovers as gifts to scavengers. Maybe they are still spies. Maybe some of them have left that life behind. Maybe Napoleon has gotten a little fat from days of doing nothing but experimenting in the kitchen, drinking hideous amounts of wine, and bothering his lovers. Maybe Gaby has her own garage, and the laundry always smells overwhelmingly of motor oil.

Maybe Illya can learn how to braid her hair. Maybe in the winter, he opens the same window each morning to smoke, leaving a permanent smear of ash along the sill.

Napoleon is ashamed, somewhat, of his daydream. He’s a grown man. He knows better than to guess what’s in store for them, least of all because they are still learning each other and what must be changed to fit more comfortably. In all likelihood, at least one of them will be dead before the decade is out.

Unless, of course, they’re simply too good at their jobs.

 

**xxvi.**

 

They get into the bed like soldiers in formation, one at a time, a little stiff and formal for silk sheets. Gaby takes the window and Illya means to take the door, but Napoleon lifts an eyebrow and doesn’t move until the fight visibly drains out of Illya. Those big shoulders slump, and Illya folds himself into the middle of the bed as though he’s never slept on anything but the edge of the mattress. Napoleon turns off the light and slides beneath the comforter in transient dark.

Gaby breaks the ice by flinging a leg over Illya’s hips. He startles, and Napoleon laughs and cups the ball of Gaby’s heel. Better. Not best but better.

“Try not to think of all the fun we could get up to,” he advises.

“I think that you’re the one thinking about it,” says Gaby, but she touches the hollow of Illya’s throat to soften the scolding. How it is so much more effective than if she’d touched Napoleon, he doesn’t know. But Illya’s eyelashes become tiny blotted shadows as he closes them, and Napoleon feels peace settle into his body, something of a stranger.

They are quiet together a long while. It is as though they have been sleeping in this arrangement for a lifetime. Sometime in the night, Illya stirs, says mutedly, “I will wake up in the room.” Gaby’s snoring remains a musical wheeze, so Napoleon hushes him, mouthing against Illya’s temple the words that he can only say in the cover of dark and on the medium of skin. Illya turns into him, and they sleep again. The window is locked; they don’t fit together in the same seamless, bastioned way, but Napoleon knows the feeling of it, of being latched and pummeled by invisible forces.

 

**xxvii.**

 

For breakfast, he orders up his usual staple—poached egg and sausage with toast—and adds five orders of hotcakes and scrambled eggs smothered in the kind of old smelly cheese guaranteed to make both Gaby and Illya vexed at him. He’s the first awake; his feet are disappointingly cold because Gaby has stolen most of the sheets and comforter and wrapped herself like a used hand towel in them. Illya is a solid wall of heat, but Napoleon knows better than to shove icy toes between his calves. Today, anyway.

His head hurts a little. Yesterday seems embarrassing and overblown in the wake of the morning, a curious side effect of time. When Napoleon moves to get up and call room service, Illya opens his eyes blearily, stares at him, and then goes back to sleep. Not so overblown, Napoleon decides, sitting on the edge of the bed another ten minutes just to watch them sleep.

By the time breakfast arrives and Napoleon has flirted with the help, Gaby’s forehead is wrinkling against the sunlight. “Lazybones,” says Napoleon, sipping his espresso, “the both of you. For shame, Peril.”

Illya huffs, steals Napoleon’s pillow, and jams it beneath his own head. 

“Noooo,” Gaby moans.

“And you call yourselves spies.”

“You have orange sauce on your chin,” mumbles Illya, which is extraordinary because Napoleon hadn’t seen him open his eyes, and because marmalade isn’t _orange sauce_. Napoleon slides his thumb over his chin and sulks.

“You lie,” he says, even though his thumb did come away a little sticky. “Or do you? The jury’s still out. Go on, tell another one.”

"You are a good spy," Illya says, burying his face in Gaby’s wild racket of hair.

"The drug seems to still be in his system," says Napoleon.

Gaby groans, a good four registers lower than even Illya’s voice. “ _Quiet_.”

“Until this moment, I never considered myself a morning person. But honestly, have you seen the time?”

“I don’t know why I like you,” Illya says.

Napoleon finishes his espresso and attempts to suss that out. He doesn’t need long, though, because Illya shifts in bed so that he can look at him. In this poor lighting, the scar on his cheek is a pillow crease, nothing more. “There,” he says, with deep satisfaction. “That is a lie. I know why I like you, Cowboy, although my own judgment is maybe not so good.”

“Well,” says Napoleon, his heart doing a stupid flighty move, “you do think Doir goes with Rabanne. And that _bowtie_.”

Illya glowers at him—and Napoleon’s relief is staggering, because he might have actually _missed_ that expression.

“Stop flirting with him,” Gaby says, voice muffled into her mound of pillows. “He hates that. He’s also already in our bed, Solo, and you’re _not_.”

“Oh,” says Napoleon. He puts his cup and saucer on the bedside table, unknots his robe, and puts his knee to the mattress. “I got you both breakfast,” he says, although it’s an admittedly weak protest.

Gaby makes a considering noise, and her fingers twitch against the blankets. But Illya only reaches for Napoleon—fists the collar of his robe from either side—pulls him in closer, impatient. He kisses Napoleon hard; his mouth tastes sour, an artifact that proves he’d at least gotten some sleep.

Napoleon yanks on his ear until he lets up. Then he kisses the scabs on Illya’s knuckles and gentles his touch. He remembers his promise to be good. “Don’t start things we aren’t ready to finish,” he murmurs.

“Oh _fine_ ,” says Gaby, and rolls over on top of them both.

(Napoleon hadn’t been lying. It’s two days before he lets them wobble out of the hotel room, and that’s only because Waverly refuses to foot the bill any longer and has called them home. When the plane lifts off, Gaby is asleep on Illya’s shoulder, and Illya touches the back of the seat in front of him every so often, thoughtfully. An imagined chess board, Napoleon realizes, and he holds on to that picture of them, holds on to it for the uncertain world ahead.)

 

**xxvix.**

 

Illya keeps his unofficial “question” long past the point when Napoleon remembers to look for it. There are enough questions between them that he imagines he’s missed it, or that maybe Illya’s forgotten about their deal altogether. Gaby reminds them for a little while, but then she too loses the promise to time, to the international rat race that is their lives. After all, they do their best to be honest with each other. It’s a work in progress. But they try.

Sometimes Napoleon’s tongue is a little careless. He lies about small things without meaning to—card games won, backroom deals made, women he’s slept with on assignment and once, when he should have known better, off—but Gaby has a nose for lies like a mongoose for a snake. She can cut them into matchsticks and burn Napoleon’s stories to the ground with a few curt words. She holds him accountable, and slowly the lies taper, the exaggerations quell. Napoleon is enough as he is. What a strange wonder, he thinks.

Illya, though the drug is certainly gone from his system, maintains a curious death grip on the truth when he’s not on duty. When he can’t tell them something, he chooses instead to not talk at all. That’s hard in its own ways. Napoleon has a special hate in his heart for well-intentioned silences.

But there are benefits, too. Napoleon never questions Illya’s love: its honesty is abrasive, small droplets of blood welling in its wake. “It would be better for me,” he will say, “if I hadn’t met you. I am _glad_ ,” he will also say, “to have met you.” At night, in their bed, beneath Napoleon’s weight and with Gaby’s teeth in his neck, he will pant the most beautiful things, the kinds of things Napoleon will take to the grave.

Gaby is a conductor of lies: she orchestrates, she builds, she wields them like weapons. But behind closed doors, her heels come off. She dances in the open living areas. She drinks hard. She gives them endearments that burrow in like bullets and become bone. If she lies, they never catch her. “I have no time,” she tells Napoleon, just the once. “I have no hours to waste on stupidity and reparations. My time is gone. Sixty more years, or one. Who knows. I meant what I said. I will be better, because his mother promised him good fortune. Who even says that—what does good fortune mean to a _child_ —but I won’t wait to become better later. I have no time for later.”

But Illya’s question does come, and it comes later.

 

**xxx.**

 

It’s four years after Istanbul and someone’s left two mugs of coffee on the kitchen counter. The sunlight unravels the curling steam above them, and Napoleon picks one up to inhale the scent of a good, strong roast. He’s barely out of bed, still in slippers. The silence in the flat—aside from Gaby’s familiar, endearing snores as she sleeps off the worst of her hangover—means that he’s just missed Illya’s departure. By a minute or two, from the look of things. Unfortunate.

He drinks the coffee, humming at its quality. It’s not like Illya to lavish in capitalist luxuries.

There are two rings on the counter. One is boxy, looks like it has weight. The other probably does not disguise a tracking device.

Napoleon considers them. He knows the question is not as straightforward as it seems—that it is more _would you_ than _will you_ for any number of reasons—that the logistics are a nightmare and someone will feel left out, unless they’re very good at their jobs and at each other. He finishes his coffee, rinses the mug out, and leaves it in the sink. The rings are still warm, as if they’ve been in someone’s pocket before being left behind. He closes the silver in his fist.

_I have no time_ , he thinks, staring at the coffee grinder. The lid is open; tiny black granules cling to its lip. _My time is gone. Sixty years more, or one. We only ever promised him honesty._

Napoleon also remembers telling Illya: _You can have more._

He picks up Gaby’s coffee, and he goes to convince her of their answer.


End file.
